Abascal opens the political year by attacking “the PP’s big scam”

Santiago Abascal opened the political year this Monday with a press conference in which he harshly attacked the PP and denounced an alleged “invasion” of illegal immigrants, for which he blamed the Socialists and the Popular Party equally. “The most serious thing that is happening in Spain today is the PP’s great scam, because it serves to keep Sánchez in power,” he said.

The leader of Vox, who at the beginning of the summer broke the five autonomous coalition governments that he maintained with the PP (Castilla y León, Comunidad Valenciana, Aragón, Murcia and Extremadura), due to his support for the distribution of unaccompanied foreign minors who are crowded in the Canary Islands, has now warned that “it would be very difficult” for his party to approve the budgets of the communities where the Popular Party governs in a minority if they vote in Congress for the reform of the immigration law to make this distribution obligatory.

“Vox will be in total opposition both in the national Parliament and in the regional ones, where the PP will supposedly have to make a pact with the Socialist Party,” he warned. “If the PP has learned its lesson, it will have to change its immigration policy. If it does not change anything, it will have to call the PSOE,” he added.

In his appearance, held at the national headquarters of Vox, Abascal accused the PP of “refusing to pursue corruption” for not having summoned Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, to appear before the Senate’s commission of inquiry, where it has an absolute majority. “The PP’s great scam is to pretend to be in opposition while sharing everything with Sánchez,” he insisted, referring to the pact with the socialists in the European institutions and the agreement to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

Although he has mentioned in passing the special funding for Catalonia agreed by the socialists with ERC to appoint Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat, he has made it clear that the flag that his party will raise in the coming months will be the rejection of illegal immigration. “We are facing an migratory invasion of an Islamist nature, promoted by the left and by the PP both in Spain and in Europe,” he claimed, after attributing to immigrants the insecurity of citizens and “the collapse of public services.”

When asked by a journalist about the victory of the “neo-Nazis” of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the elections of the federal state of Thuringia this Sunday, Abascal accused him of lying for using this epithet. “I do not defend neo-Nazis, but I am very happy with the reaction of the German people and believing that 30% of Germans are neo-Nazis is either ignorance or bad intentions,” he replied. To justify his party not having achieved the electoral results of its European counterparts, he argued that “in Spain we started later and, luckily, the problems of immigration do not go at the same speed or with the same intensity as those being experienced in Great Britain, Germany or France and that has to do with the social and electoral response of the Spanish people.”